Vasculitis refers to a broad category of diseases, which causes inflammation in various blood carrying vessels like veins arteries and capillaries. This disease is also known as angiitis and arteritis. Vasculitis often causes abnormality in the blood carrying vessels by thickening and weakening them, making them narrow which creates hindrances in proper blood flow. This leads to a gradual decline in proper functioning of the organ, because of nutrient deficiency or the lack of oxygen-rich blood. In some cases, it may also lead to organ damage and eventually death. Vasculitis in the brain may lead to a stroke and in the heart, it may cause a heart attack. The same in kidneys could cause abnormalities, which may cause progressive kidney failure. This disease can affect people of all ages and genders. But, there are forms of vasculitis that affects only a certain group of people. As an example, Kawasaki is a type of vasculitis which mostly occurs in children. Another kind is called IgA Vasculitis (Henoch-schonlein) is also more common in children than adults. Giant cell arteritis is another form of vasculitis which is usually diagnosed in adults over 50 years.
Symptoms
Mostly signs and symptoms of vasculitis depend on which blood carrying vessel is damaged or functioning of which organ is not proper. Some common signs and symptoms which occur in almost all kinds of vasculitis are:
- Fever
- Weight loss
- muscle pain
- Loss of appetite
- Tiredness
- Joint pain
- General aches and pains night sweats
- Fatigue
- Nerve problems such as numbness and weakness
Causes
Causes of vasculitis are still not fully clear. However there are two school of thoughts, one theory says, vasculitis is just a genetic disease which gets triggered at a certain point of time, whereas the second school of thought has a theory that vasculitis is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks its own body which gets triggered because of few long term chronic diseases such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C. Some researchers also believe that it is just a simple side effect or reaction of medication. A different hypothesis also says it's a part of some major rheumatoid diseases like systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren's syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis, but it has also been observed that few patients suffering from vasculitis don't have any of the above-mentioned diseases.
There are different types of vasculitis. Few most common types are:
- Bachet's Disease
- Berger's Disease
- Churg-Strauss Syndrome
- Cryoglobulinemia
- Kawasaki Disease
- Giant cell arteritis
- Hypersensitive Vasculitis
- Granulomatosis with polyangiitis
- Wegener's granulomatosis
- Henoch-schonlein Purpura
- Central Nervous system vasculitis
Treatment
The root cause for vasculitis has not been determined yet, so there is no clear treatment of the root cause. However, there are few ways to do the preventive therapy. The preventive therapy includes two parts, the first one is controlling the inflammation of blood carrying vessels by medication and the second step is preventing relapse. Sometimes vasculitis is triggered by a particular disease some medication is also needed to treat that disease. All this includes a lot of prescriptive drugs which physician should be sure is not having any kind of side effects which can trigger vasculitis even further. It has also been observed that a few people get relief for a short period, however, it may flare-up later.
In some cases, surgery is another way of treating the disease where vasculitis creates a balloon-like structure in the wall of arteries or veins. This balloon-like structure usually needs surgical treatment.
Disclaimer: The information in no way constitutes, or should be construed as medical advice. Nor is the above article an endorsement of any research findings discussed in the article an endorsement for any of the source publications.
